Do working mothers raise couch potato kids?
Author InfoBrown, Judith E. Broom, Dorothy H. Nicholson, Jan M. Bittman, Michael Abstract Alarm about the increasing prevalence of childhood obesity has focussed attention on individual lifestyle behaviours that may contribute to unhealthy weight. More distal predictors such as maternal employment may also be implicated since working mothers have less time to supervise children’s daily activities. The research reported here used two waves of data from the Longitudinal Study of Australian Children to investigate whether mothers’ hours in paid work shape young children’s television viewing, snacking and physical activity, and through those lifestyle behaviours, children’s weight at ages 4-5 years and 6-7 years. At both ages, children’s lifestyle behaviours were interrelated and associated with weight status. Cross-sectional analysis confirmed small, direct associations between longer hours of maternal employment and child weight at age 4-5 years, but not with child’s weight measured two
